This was a cute enough book that explains participles and shows how not to dangle them. I work with clients who are mainly ESL, and I could see this book being a useful supplement to help explain rewriting sentences for clarity.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a free electronic ARC of this book, received in exchange for an honest review.

Even good writers will find themselves dangling a participle every now and then, and now, children can learn to avoid the dreaded dangling participle thanks to a clever new book for them, “Don’t Dangle Your Participle” by Vanita Oelschlager. She and artist Mike Desantis do a terrific job of illustrating for young readers and writers what they are really saying when they use a dangling participle. For instance, one sentence read, “While riding his skateboard in the park, a deer almost ran into Lester.” The artwork shows exactly what the sentence describes: a deer riding a skateboard through the park. Another page of the book clears things up with this sentence: “While riding his skateboard in the park, Lester was almost hit by a deer.” This time, Lester is shown on the skateboard as a deer hops over him. This book is a charming way to teach young readers and writers how to avoid a dangling participle, and now that I think of it, a few adults I know could benefit as well!

Not for the faint of heart, Vanita Delschlanger and Mike Desantis' "Don't Dangle Your Participle" may be exactly what you need in your classroom as you teach the concept to young children! It's fun, it's instructive, and it's beautifully illustrated, and the situations depicted on the page are the kind of hilarious exactly calculated to appeal to children on the cusp of understanding the rather advanced concept of irony. The language is a bit difficult to parse for young children, however, so this is best suited for collective learning environments where there's plenty of time for the teacher or educator to explain the concepts, situations, and unfamiliar diction. I would not expect children under four to understand the ironic situations, and even six and seven year olds will require some assistance. That said, this is a great idea and a potentially useful tool.

Adults, who have long left the classroom, remember learning about "dangling participles" but how many can say they remember what it means or can explain the concept to children just learning about proper grammar? This book is fun and may make the adults feel smarter at the end also, when they remember what this phrase means.
The illustrations are bold and fun, making learning and remembering the proper phrasing easy. I enjoyed the expressions on the faces.
The bonus information on how the illustrations originated is also interesting.

A clever children's book. Thoroughly enjoyed reading it and going over it with my nephew. Easy to understand and engage with. Illustrations were delightful. Only have positive things to say about this book.

Could not find the book on Goodreads to offer a review so added one on Amazon.

DON'T DANGLE YOUR PARTICIPLE by Vanita Oelschlager and illustrated by Mike DeSantis is a fun and entertaining grammar lesson for children and adults. "A participle is a verb that acts like an adjective. Let's use the verb growl. The participle is the verb ending with an 'ing' and sometimes an 'ed'. Growling is the participle."
Words and colourful illustrations show the incorrect and correct placement of a participle. My favourite example of a dangling participle was "Wrestling a giant, hairy fly, Simon was fascinated by the spider." What or who was wrestling with the giant, hairy fly? Surely it was not Simon. The participle finds its way back to the correct noun. "Wrestling a giant, hairy fly, the spider fascinated Simon." What was wrestling the fly? The spider!

Thank you Vanita Books and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review DON'T DANGLE YOUR PARTICIPLE by Vanita Oelschlager and illustrated by Mike DeSantis.
5 stars

What a fantastic way to teach a simple, yet complex, idea to kids.

This is something that so many adults have trouble with - I thought that the authors did a great job of communicating the idea in a cute, fun, and (best of all) simple way.

<i>Thanks to NetGalley and Vanita Books for a copy in return for an honest review.</i>

What an absolutely fun way to introduce an English grammar faux pas! The author begins with explaining very simple what a dangling participle is, and then illustrates it through examples. Through lots of very funny examples. My children always respond when books are silly and this book delivers on just the right amount of ridiculousness to illustrate exactly what dangling participles are. The illustrations themselves are bright, colorful, and well done.

Great way to teach kids about not dangling participles, all the examples were really clear. The illustrations are beautiful as well as funny, and help to really highlight the issues and enhance the learning. Overall I loved it and I think my 8 year old will love it too!

This book does a great of explaining these difficult grammar concepts. The illustrations are light hearted and fun.

This was a clever way of illustrating dangling participles and participles used correctly. The illustrations used really accentuated the correct meaning. A fun and entertaining grammar lesson!

Thanks to the author, publisher, and Netgalley, for the complimentary copy to review.

This book definitely gets the dropped participle meaning across. With many examples, the author shows how a participle that lost its way, makes a huge difference in the meaning of a sentence. The illustrations are quite fun as they show the different meanings in the two versions of the sentence. There is also an "About the Art" page in the back of the book which shows the steps the illustrator took in making the fun images. I am not sure this book needed to be as many pages with as many examples, though they were fun to read about and view the images.

A very cute book when working with parts of speech. An excellent way to show what a dangling participle is. I will definitely use this book when the topic arises in my curriculum.

I never thought grammar could be this much fun! The illustrations are beautiful.

I wanted to love this book, and there were aspects of it that I definitely DID love. The illustrations were wonderful—so colorful and entertaining. The author's examples of dangling participles, and the illustrations to accompany them, were clever and funny. I can imagine a room full of children erupting in laughter over the image of a grown man with a turkey hanging out of his mouth chasing a dog around the kitchen, or a little girl melting in the hot sun as she finishes her ice cream.

I also appreciated the introductory grammar "lesson." I think especially, if one is using this book as an educational tool, the definition and explanation of the function of a participle would be very helpful.

That said, I would echo other reviews about the writing quality of the corrected sentences. In order to maintain the participle from the first sentence, the new sentences are written in the passive voice, with the subject of the sentence between the item acted UPON rather than the person or animal performing the action. While technically correct, the use of the passive voice indicates lower quality writing. For that reason, in real-world instances where a dangling participle is found, the sentences in question require more of an overhaul. Obviously, that kind of re-writing effort doesn't lend itself well to the goal and examples in this book, which is likely why the author needed to rely on the passive voice. As I said before, it isn't technically incorrect, and the book still teaches student the "don't" of dangling participles. However, a teacher hoping to teach quality sentence structure to his or her students would need to look beyond this book for stellar examples of participle use.

This is a useful teaching tool for older kids. I went through it with my eight year old son who recognised a few of the terms and concepts and it seems to have helped him have a bit more confidence in his literacy class at school.

Based on the level of grammar knowledge that a reader would need before being able to understand this book, I would expect the anticipated demographic for this book to be age ten or older. However, the illustrations indicate a much younger audience. Additionally, I found the academic explanation to be cursory and confusing and the examples to be clunky and repetitive. Furthermore, the suggested formula for correcting a dangling participle yielded several examples which force the writer to use passive verbs, which creates a second common writing flaw that teachers will later need to correct.

Another winner from philanthropist author Vanita Oelschlager. Humorous illustrations support and explain what a dangling participle is and how to correct one. The book makes it easy to remember and avoid the common pitfalls. Although it's aimed at younger readers, the lessons contained are timely and fun for adult readers as well.

I do wish that the examples in the book hadn't all been formatted in the same way, and I felt that some of the corrected versions were a little stiff and unnatural. Overall, however, I really enjoyed this book and think it could make a fun addition to a grammar unit in a school or homeschool environment.

Three and a half stars

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher.

A fun book to teach how grammar can impact the meaning of a sentences. The comparison examples will help teach the proper usage. A great resource for any teacher in elementary levels!

It wasn't bad,but even though I liked illustrations,I didn't see some story in this book and that's a minus for me.